Rikke T

a study

Spring has begun; life is rekindled...

Itty Bitty Spring Dragon stickers ♡

SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN

1952

The belated continuation of the fanciful brooms collection. Instead of more flora brooms, I chose to explore fauna brooms~

I actually drew this months back but completely forgot about it ahaha

I still have dozens of broom ideas thanks to everyone's suggestions and I'll be working on those as inspiration strikes!

Because people want to go up in a treehouse. They like it, it’s fun. Even adults see a treehouse and something in them goes “I want to check it out up there.” And then they’re not seeing a reality that wasn’t there before. They’re seeing reality which was always there, fresh, thanks to the treehouse.

John Musker and Ron Clements did these movies.

What have we learned?

Stories are not about escaping reality. They’re are about escaping the lies we’ve started believing by seeing reality from a fresh perspective.

Use this to beat the snot out of any argument that goes “it’s just a good story, not everything has to have a message” like those two things are somehow opposed to each other, when actually, “good story” and “message” can’t exist without one another.

That didn’t mean the rest of the store didn’t play “Who Has the Shittiest Partner” because if there was any stereotype about the kind of girl who worked in a sex shop it was girls with absolutely atrocious taste. Not just the straight girls, either. The lesbian and bi girls had just as shitty stories. I was an outlier who always sat out these conversations because my partner at the time was so precious.

So we were all surprised and delighted when J’s newest guy came in to pick her up. He was nicely dressed, very charismatic, a widower. He was a bit older than her but we were all ready to overlook the age gap because he was so charming and J was so happy.

I only met him once or twice when he came to pick her up for a date but things were going well. She told us he was sad sometimes about his wife who’d gone missing several years ago but that he treated her like a princess.

That was great! We were happy.

Then the cops showed up one day. They asked if J was working and I got the manager. We never gave out schedules, not even to cops. But they did catch up to her eventually.

She came in distraught the day after. It turns out that her dreamy widower was wanted for questioning. Because apparently due to some new forensics process they were able to apply it turned out he very probably killed his wife.

I’m not sure if he still had the rug or whether they searched his house but apparently a rug from his possession was now testing positive for having had A Lot of Blood in it.

my endpaper illustrations for the Illumicrate editions of Song of the Lioness ✨

There’s pressure in your chest you’ve never felt before. You want to laugh. No, you want to scream. Your body is too tired to jump around like you did when you were a little girl, but you find yourself bouncing in place regardless. The thrill of battle and of escaping the castle as it collapsed is thrumming through your veins. You did it. You did it.

You are so happy, so devastatingly happy, that you can feel yourself shutting down. You need—you need rest. Food. Sleep.

Then you can save her. Then you can bring her back.

“Roksala,” Prince Eloyn says. You squint past the last rays of day to see him frowning at you. The ruins of the tyrant’s castle don’t appear to interest him. His eyes narrow. “Are you ignoring me?”

A couple I was helping earlier had two little ones, three and six, who were behaving in a rather saintly fashion for the average bored kid I see. I tried to engage them with remotes and things while their parents talked.

Eventually they were restless enough that I pulled out notepads and asked if they wanted to draw. The three year old quickly lost interest and I went over to ask her favorite animal. She told me “elephant” so to delight and amaze her I started drawing an elephant. Usually kids are into it.

When I was done she pronounced, “It looks like a giraffe.”

I staggered back melodramatically but actually laughing hysterically and said, “There goes my art degree!”

The parents laughed and said kids were harsh critics. When they checked out they saw my elephant doodle on the desk and both did a double take like, “Woah, that’s a really good elephant!”